EU recordings granted 20-year copyright extension, old guard kept from heading to the poor house

Artists, producers, and label executives across the EU are praising a new ruling that extends copyright protection for sound recordings from the existing 50 years to 70 years. The new regulation also sets up a fund for session players, creates an ‘out’ for artists whose recorded music isn’t properly made available for sale by labels, and establishes a ‘clean slate’ clause that doesn’t punish artists whose recording sales don’t cover their up-front advances.

One argument for the extension purports that the expiration of upcoming copyrights on recordings by artists whose songs are more or less part of the public consciousness — The Beatles being the most obvious example — would prevent advertisers from supporting new and upcoming artists by relying on highly popular yet copyright-free material to sell their products and services. One imagines that Apple would still lean heavily on the indie community to sell its phones and MP3 players, but in a post-1960s copyright expiration world, anything could be possible.

In other words, Paul McCartney is no longer expected to begin his rapid descent into poverty. No word yet on the state of Ringo Starr, though one hopes he’s doing just fine in his Octopus garden.

Do you ever just lie on the ground in a deep depression, fantasizing about murdering Zooey Deschanel and wishing you had something more to look forward to than your own death? Just me? Well, at least I can postpone therapy for now while the stars have aligned and gifted me with one last treasure to anticipate. Brooklyn-based Northern-Spy Records has officially existed for one year and are accordingly throwing a one-year anniversary festival in celebration of their first 16 releases. The melancholia-lifting event will be held October 1-2 at Shea Stadium and Zebulon Cafe in Brooklyn and features the label roster (Zs, Bird Names, Colin L. Orchestra, Spanish Donkey, etc.) together for the first time in one place.

Northern Spy Records was founded by former staff of innovative jazz imprint ESP-Disk’ and has dedicated its first year as a diverse, artist-run label to releasing cutting-edge, boundary-pushing music from free improvisation to no wave to popular music.

Along with incredible performances, the festival will feature Northern Spy’s recurrent pop-up record fair program, which has worked collaboratively with New York area vinyl collectors and underground labels to bring rare stock to special locations around the Northeast. This edition will feature over 2,000 pieces of vintage vinyl titles, a host of local underground label titles, limited-edition tour merch and back catalog titles from the Northern Spy roster, including rare test pressings of NS 001-016. Holy shit! Between this and Neon Marshmallow fest, I’m going to be busy in October, which means Deschanel is safe for now.

Also, please mark your calendars for another great event that Northern Spy is presenting on September 22 at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn with free-jazz saxophone legend Arthur Doyle and His New Quiet Screamers. And don’t forget the Diamond Terrifier record release show on September 17!

Is there a single glitch musician more renowned, accomplished, and innovative than Germany’s Carsten Nicolai, a.k.a. Alva Noto? That’s a rhetorical question. There really isn’t. In addition to the two superb collaborative albums already released this year, Summvs with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Id with Ryoji Ikeda (under the inclusive moniker, Cyclo.), Nicolai, as Alva Noto, will be releasing univrs, his first solo album of the year, on October 17.

As the relevant press release reveals, univrs will be the unofficial sequel to Unitxt (TMT Review) from 2008 and will, from a conceptual point of view, focus on language as a source of unification and universality, as opposed to an idea concerned with bits or units of information. I won’t bother surmising in detail what this may indicate from a musical standpoint, but I think it’s reasonable to expect something less fluctuating and a bit more fluid and engrossing.

In addition to the standard album release, there will also be the option to purchase a CD+DVD special-edition version, available exclusively from the Raster-Noton web store. This edition will include two booklets explaining the visual concept behind the live performance of univrs, as well as videos of the performance itself and of the ‘uni acronym video stills,’ a series of 208 three-letter acronyms set in alphabetical order, designed to create a ‘random narrative.’

Those unfamiliar with Nicolai might be inclined to consider this a mammoth undertaking. In reality, this is exactly the type of achievement that fans of his work have come to expect.

Kurt Cobain’s attempt to compose the perfect pop song his way (and with a little help from The Pixies and Boston’s “More than a Feeling”) resulted in 1991’s Nevermind opening track and hit single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The track became the anthem of 90s teen angst and a theme song for the grunge movement in general. It also eventually became the most overplayed and abused song to ever come from an unlikely successful and punk-inspired group. Even worse, it was endorsed by the audiences in which the band considered themselves in opposition. I recall sitting at a pep rally in junior high as the cheerleaders danced to it and the football players cheered. I wanted nothing to do with Nirvana anymore. Anal Cunt was my jam after that.

Since the early 90s, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” has further been exhausted by oblivious tools such as Hannah Montana, Metallica, Flyleaf (yeah, I don’t know, some Christian band), Chris Brown (he just kind of dances to the actual track), and some kid on American Idol. And now, after you’ve just exited an elevator that was playing a muzak version of it, here’s an announcement about one more version: a number of Ontario rockers will meet up at the Toronto Underground Cinema to perform Nirvana’s beaten-to-death ditty 144 times in a row on October 1 as their contribution to the many Nevermind 20th anniversary festivities this year. That’s right, 144 times.

The performance, titled A Brief History of Rebellion, will feature a rotating cast of musicians, including members of Tokyo Police Club, Fucked Up, Woodhands, Gallows, One Hundred Dollars, The Flatliners, Junior Battles, Buck 65, and D-Sisive, with even more musicians to be announced in the coming weeks. Lyrics will be provided to audience members who would like to chant along.

It goes without saying that this doesn’t need to happen. At all. But in defense of the organizers of this event, perhaps this is more of a performance art piece? To overplay the overplayed. To create a live experience of the song’s strength and meaning decaying through repetition, right in front of your face. Nah, they don’t know what they’re doing. This is just another performance presented by Juicebox, which runs as part of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, a series of all-night events taking place throughout Toronto on October 1 to “celebrate the arts.”

I won’t pretend to be a Lil Wayne expert, because really, he’s not my cup of tea. Not at all. I do remember chants of “Free Weezy” reverberating through the crowd at Bonnaroo last summer as we all waited for The Flaming Lips to come on. And back in April, two friends of mine drove eight hours to see him, despite only knowing one of his songs.

Maybe I should check out a track or two, just to see what all the commotion is about, considering that Lil Wayne currently has 12 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Only The Beatles have had more simultaneously charting songs — 14, back on April 11, 1964. But, Sufjan just came on in the coffee shop where I’m currently sitting, and I’m not feeling particularly adventurous. I’ll just stick to what I know I like. However, if you’re more inclined to keep up with the times, you could try “Mirror,” which features Bruno Mars and leads Weezy’s string of Billboard hits with the #16 spot. Whatever floats your boat. I’ll be listening to “Predatory Wasp of the Palisades” for the 74th time.

News is circulating on Twitter that DJ Mehdi (pictured above) has passed away.

The French DJ/producer, real name Mehdi Favéris-Essadi, was a core member of Paris’s Ed Banger crew, and most recently had been collaborating with Riton on ghetto-house project Carte Blanche. FACT hasn’t seen any official statement on this tragic death, nor heard anything of how it happened, but a tweet from Mehdi’s old friend, French hip-hop DJ Cut Killer, suggests that the news is, regrettably, true: